Peavey Rockmaster

Plug and play. 3ch tube pre. Gain bass mid treb and pres control om clean ch. Gain, vith push/pull for boost, and master on crunch and ultra ch. Shared 3band UTRA EFFECTIVE active eq with push/pull mid shift. Ive found that +/-2 db on bass/treble knobs is usualy enugh for me. When boosting mid, i use the "push" freq response and when cutting i pull the mid to get an other caracer on the mid band. WERY usefull. Thats what the less is more player neads. But the tone geeks out the probably would like seperate eq on crunch and ultra. That can be done. 5 fx loops. 1-2-3-4-5 fx loops. One for each channel, one fore the ODchannels together and one for all three. So go ahead and buy a 2X15 rack eq, use one ch for crunch and one for ultra, and tweak til you get blue.

Ch switching from footpedal. Or any rack relayswitching system, i use mesa midi matrix. Boost is only switchebal from frontpanel, unfortunally. But with schematic and layout in hand (google peavey rockmaster service manual and you find it too) I've found a way. Just waiting for for a new connector to arive. Al internal switching is RELAY, not fet so this is easy, and sounds mutch bether.

No master volume so any overal vol adjustment is hard if you dont have an easy availebal master vol on your poweramp or somewhere in your rack. For this its a 9.

Main guitar. Modified mex fat strat. Duncan "mini humbucker" in nec position with serie/splitt/paralell switch. 2'nd tonecontrol converted to vol for mid p.u.

Amps used: FXloop return on Vox ac30cc2 is my favorite for bright sounds.

Classic60 is also good for the fatter sounds but i dont have a cab that matches. Have tried with vox 2x12 and it sounds great for punchy fat sounds. And Mashall 1960 4X12 ROCKS with this settup. My Randall cheapo 4x12 is to bassy, muddy highs and loos lowend, for this combo, Hartke 4x10 i dont like, but i dont know why.

Marshall 9005. Les bottom, brighter, clearer higs. Sounds good troug Randall, but to sharp for me on vox and marshall. Nice cosy sound on Hartke.

guitar-->Ibanez blubber Wah on floor. --> midi matix--> stompbox fx in loops(whatever U like in front of amp)-->Rockmaster-->Midi matrix-->G-major-->amp.

Clean is.... Clean. The bright kind no the warm kind.

Crunch is my favorite channel. Ultra responsive to pickup, vol and tone changin on guitar, als vel as playing. Gain @ 6. P.U. selector, tona and vol control(s) on my guitar takes it from warm clean to ac/dc. Same setting but with boost engaged it goes from Blues to hard rock.

Ultra sings. Al the gain you'll ever nead, and than some. I recomend to turn gain down to under 5 if you'r going to use the boost switch.

Boost is not linear, it also changes frq response some. Crunch gets brighter, and ultra fatter and more bassy with it engaged.

The unit alone is not noisy at all. Hi gain settings amplifyes the noise from the rest of your signal chain from guitar-->inputt, oufcourse but what amp dont? My Midi Matrix actually itroduced some noise in my rig, but i'm not goin to blame that on the rockmaster.

I use this rig to play styles from Beatles-->Pantera. And it always deliver the basic tone i nead. I set EQ's flat and let the g-major eq do the final tone shaping. But that is just for convenience. The eq in the rockmaster is well tuned to get alot of sounds. Wil not do it all by it self, but goddamnclose.

It neads an good guitar, tubes, poweramp, and cab to shine. It also benefits from a good player. Its an honest preamp, it does what you tell it to do. It's realy good at exposing my sloppy playing and bad cabels. But its a good friend once you get to know it.

I give it a 9 becuse of the muddynes introduced when boosting the ultra channel.

Its oldschool american peavey. Ever tried to destroy Peavey gear from that period. I HAVE. As i like to modify and repear guitar gear on my spare time, i alvays have to open up every new pice f gear i get. When i was figuring out how to remote switch the boost i managed to put the pcb, solder side down on to the inside of the chassi, mains connected. I think i shorted every single solder joint, sparks flying everywhere. Changed the fuse and fired it up. And it stil works. Jakcs and pots nead looking after. Tubes nead changing every now and then. Do this and it should work fine. Any potensial problem i can think of must be lose solder joint on jacks, but that is easely fixed if it shoul happen.

Never delt with them. But manuals is free from their website, and they send schematics for a low fee.

I play mostly blues/rock/metal. it delivers perfectly for me.
Playin music for 17 years, guitar for 14. Everything from church to weddings, cover band and metall. Ive used the rockmaster for 4. Just out of an Pedalbord period. Used stombox straigt to amp for about a year. Pulled the old rack out of the closet some days ago, and finaly its fun to play again.

If stolen og lost id seartch every corner of the web to get an new one.

I love the sound, the fx-loops, the playability. Wish it had mastervolume.

Compared to a bunch of stomp dist's, mesa, marshall, fender, traynor, and digital amps. Marshal, mesa, bbe and digital preamps. It kicks *** on every single one of the sounds i want. But if you like marshall or Mesa sound. Buy Marshall og Mesa. I think its closer to Mesa than Marshall in sound.

It helps me make music, in the way that it makes me have fun playing again.

the rockmaser is a 3 channel preamp. i has all knobs for adjustment, and is all analog with 4 tubes. pretty much the front side of an amp.

i'm using this with a peavey v-type, with an emg 85. with the active it's dead silent. with a SD JB it's no more noisey than your typical high gain tube amp. i run into the rockmaster into a line 6 tone port for recording and go direct in and only use the speaker sims and chorus and delay. honestly this is the best sound ive gotten for recording. it really sounds like a live amp recorded. plenty o dynamics. and not at all sterile sounding. with the active eq you can really get alot of sounds from this pre. it really excells at the hot rodded marshall sounds of the 80's, but the mids can be scooped out to get a nice modern sound as well. the eq has a dramatic effect on the sound and is very touchy. i've built tube amps from the ground up, and the rockmaster is very good at giving that tube dist. all 3 channels are useable but the dist. is where its at. i put jj's tubes in it and it really improved the overall tone. the jj's replaced the original peavey branded tubes so i'm sure they had plenty o use on them. but the tube change took me from hoo hum o wooo hooo!

well considering these haven't been made in about 10 years and mine is still kickin says something for it. peavey makes great stuff and you can count on it.

i bought this used through the bay. i emailed peavey to ask for he schematic for he preamp and the footswitch. it took a couple tries but they got it to me. REALLY impressive for a piece of gear thats been discontinued for about ten years.

i play anything from bb king to sepletura. and have been for more time han i care to admidt. this preamp is he best ive found overall versatility. the band thing is beyond me now, so i don'tt need to blow out the neighbors. this preamp sounds great through a power amp and recorded directly through the tone port. peavey could rake in some easy bux by re releasing this beast.

you have to really know it to get your sound out cause its real sensative.

otherwise easy to use. ive had it for at least 15 years

all channels are excellent, has kinda 90 rock sound, if you want to get some prog rock or modern kinda sound get ready to use a compressor and equalizer.

well, from my experience peavey makes very dependable stuff.
lately its been giving me trouble which is kinda long to describe so ill skip it, but for me, acceptable after 15 years, the main peavey technician in my country couldnt seem to solve it.

well, i live in israel so, i dont think that my opinion will represent the company, cause israel has little buying power in this area. i think. never the less, the technitian didnt fix it.

i like it, its good, excellent to own, you can gig with it not having to carry any amp, just find one at the venue and connect directly to its power amp, get your sound. to improve it i would add some equlization knobs frequancies like low mids hi mids and maybe another one lower from the bottom to get those basses.

I just bought this thing, in mint condition off E-bay for 200.00. It is worth every stinking penny. Doesn't get any easier. I've gone from old school when I started playing some 20 years ago, to new school through the 90's and now I'm back in old school. "Everything is relative"

WOW, thats all I can say. You techno idiots out there that have too much time on your hands to analize every Rockmaster nook and cranny need to get a life. Just play the dam thing and enjoy it, you know it rocks. It is simply awesome for clean, low noise tube sound, it blows my marshall away, really. With some stomp boxes/effects in the loops you can pretty much get any sound you want. Les Paul, jaxkson, Strat all sound great, humbuckers make this thing sizzle incerdibly.

Don't have alot of recent experience with Peavey, but have had no problems with this unit. Will procure a set of spare tubes to have on hand in case.

N/A

Rock and roll only, what else is there? I'm just at a loss for words. I'm diddling some van Heffer right now and it's bringing tears to my eyes, the sustain in ultra throug the right cab is incerdible. The only negatives I can think of is it doesn't have a beer tap or toilet paper dispenser, what where they thinking?. If you can get one of these do it, do it now. You will have nothing to complain about if you just enjoy playing.

This is a pretty straight forward guitar preamp. It has the usual volume/bass/mid/treble/presence on the clean channel. The crunch & ultra channels share the same bottom/body/edge tone controls, but have independent gain/master/boost controls.

The clean channel is rather flat & dull sounding. It has that thin, scooped peavey trademark clean sound that you simply cannot dial out with the tone controls. I have used several solid state & digital products that produce far better clean sounds.

The crunch & ultra channels should be considered one channel, because you cannot make them sound much different due to the shared eq. Your best bet is to optimize the tone controls for the crunch channel, and use the ultra channel as a lead boost. The overall character of the distortion is very aggressive in the upper mids. This is a very 80's sound. I have tried all different tubes: JJ ECC83S, Peavey Super 7's, NOS Sylvania, NOS RCA Black Plates, and NOS Telefunken long plates. The Telefunkens produced the smoothest sound, but the spikey midrange was still there no matter what tubes I tried. I also tried several different cabinets: Marshall 1960A with 75 watt Celestions, a pair of Bogner Ported 1x12 with V30s, and a Mesa 2x12 Recto cab. The Marshall proved to be the best gig & rehearsal cab. In any case, the Rockmaster's spikey qualities were still there.

The jacks & relays are notorious for going bad. I had problems with the jacks & one relay. Luckily there is a very good tech at the store where I purchased this unit from. He was able to clean the jacks and replace the relay for a reasonable price.

I think a lot of people buy these preamps and are initially blown away by the amount of gain it offers at such a low cost. However, after you use it for a while you soon realize that it's a one trick pony. Some people may like the hair metal sound it produces, but frankly I'm board with it after two years of trying to make due. I recently picked up a V-amp Pro cheap, and it is far more versatile. I can get the same level of intense gain from the V-amp, plus cool Fenderish clean sounds, excellent classic Marshall crunch, and some decent effects to boot.

Very easy !!!

Peavey Rock Master is a Tone Master !!!
You just got the right strong healthy true tube TONE!!!
not like the SansAmp PSA-1 (A big distortion pedal in rack)

The Peavey tubes are not bad, but there are some better tubes you can change.

!!! Peavey has the Tone !!!

I love it !!! and wanna get a backup !!!

clean channel is nice and shimmering.With active EQ on all channels,you can colour the tone however you please...I can get anything from Country tones to pop,to rock,to 70's metal,to blues,and lastly,to the BEST metal tones EVER. This preamp has been used from countless guys: Morse,Vandenberg,Norum,to name only a few,but I doubt that there's any of them that did not use this preamp at one time or another. I doubt this great preamp would disappoint ANYONE. The distortion has tonnes of gain if you want it,I find I dont use so much ,but it's there. It's also so QUIET,this is really a winning design from a company that has been making kick-ass amps all their life. Crunches and roars like a lion,with my Peavey power amp,there is just no contest..a sound so rich,so fat...it's a pleasure to play guitar when tone is so good and responsive. Try one of these preamps and you'll see...the ADA and others dont really stand a chance against this classic preamp.
Awesome tone.

packed with tubes and gain stages and effect loops...in 1 rack unit. 3 channels packed with tone and useful versatility

I have never had problems with ANY Peavey gear...everything they make is a quality product,and they sell it for a reasonable price. They are amongst the most skilled and honest companies,in my opinion

never needed it

I have been playing at least 14 years,so I have tried or owned quite a bit of amps...this preamp is a real classic. It makes me grin everytime I am using it. An all-time ace guitar preamp

I already own a Peavey Bravo,a kick-ass amp...tons of gain,but nowhere as muddy or raspy or compressed as Mesa Boogie.
The rockmaster sounds just like the preamp in my Bravo,but with another couple of tube gain stages added for good measure...this projects the Rockmaster into the highest gain preamp I can think of! It even sounds great direct in my computer,and when I hook it up to a tube power amp,it sounds really impressive...tons of brown sound,full of crunch,the distortion is so harmonic...wow I love this preamp. It's sound is also very touch-sensitive...on the Crunch channel,you get the PERFECT high gain blues sound,on the Ultra channel,no other known preamp could mess around with...it will zap your socks off.

this is quite frankly the best guitar preamp I can think of. Has a whopping 5 tubes in it,just as many effects loop,but it's only a single rack unit! has 3 channels and a great powerful active EQ

I have owned other great Peavey amps,the Triumph,Duel,Bravo ( which I still have). They are amngst the most reliable amps you can think of,I have never had ONE problem in so many years. Peavey makes GREAT amps ,they dont rip anybody off,unlike Mesa Boogie (Mesa Boo?).
You really get the highest you can get for your money, and when you hear that Peavey stuff,in my opinion brushes away most,if not all,major commercially available amps.

Never dealt with them for tech problems...totally trouble-free gear. they know how to build a guitar amp!

The only other amp I prefer other than a Peavey is a Marshall plexi. Peavey and Marshall sound very different from each other,but none is inferior to the other...they both have a trademark sound.

Then, considering that I have bought my Bravo for # 230 used and the Rockmaster for # 180...they are genuine bargains

my guitar is a douglas from rondomusic.net it's bassswood with a set neck and a floyd H-S-H the amp suits my style like a glove i can get from a clrystiline clean to a clear yet heavily ditorted sound to it you can get clean to blues and classic rock to any sort of real metal or hardcore i have never gotten the clean to distort only clipping on the power amp the clean is really clean with all the mids cut only on clean the distortion can be searing and slicing or really flubby due to the active EQ i like a nice searing tone so it is perfect both distorions are brutal with the boost pulled and quiet for high gain too

mine is a 1994 as most would know it has five loops four tubes three channels one clean two gain it does need channel buttons on the front several push pull pots you can run it stereo with both outputs but it is not a stero preamp

i would gig with out a back up but i would have tubes and fuses as it is a tube amp plus peaveys are known for reliablity so i would

i got it dated through thier customer service very nice i asked several questions as well answered them as best they could

i been playing about 3 years now and it goes to a crate spa100 poweramp to a KMD 212 combo modified to a cabnet if if it was stolen i would either hunt it down or hunt down a new one i might also buy either an old ultra series or a 5150/6505 i have compared it to every amp i have played Genz Benz Behringer Marshall Peavey Randall Riviera Fender Crate Trace Elliot and all of them had something i liked but this one is the best i have played so far aside from an old JCM 800 that thing killed

i am using a douglas from rondo music set neck basswood body floyd rose two humbuckers and a single coil full stock i play metal dropped to one step down and this amp is perfect my rig is Guitar>Rockmaster>Crate Spa100>KMD combo modified in to a cab with carvin speakers
i can get any sound i want cleans as close to a fender as i want kinda sparkely on clean just dime the presence and the highs cut mids and keep the bass under control only my power amo has broken up but not that much you can go from very clean to old rock to metal with a trun of the knob and stepping on a button if you got it dialed right and distortions are brutal enough with passives add a dimarzio X2N Duncan Invader any EMG or high output pick up it will get more so needs a bit of low mid

ok i have a Peavey Rockmaster tube Preamp made in 1994 i checked more later.I play metal but i do enjoy a nice clean tone from time to time this is perfect for me one clean two distortions in one compact rack unit. 5 effect loops if you only use one effect on clan but nothing else get an adapter and lave it on in the loop it has four 12Ax7 tubes there are 3 pull pots a boost for distortions and a mid shift on those as well it also has two out puts the only problems are that you need a foot switch to change the channels the two distortions share an EQ there is no way to tell what channel it is unless you by that very expensive footswitch i use a basic peavey footswitch

i would gig with it soon i hope (new band) and would gig with out a back up but would need extra tubes and fuses seems solid and i have never heard of a peavey just plain dieing for no reason

i have delt with theier customer service and also on thier forum they have set up i have been given answers by employees on thier forum and alot of other help and the person i spoke to answered all of my questions

i have been playing for three years and have had several other amps die on me with out me abusing it (randall rg25r and kmd gs130d andthe celestions in the kmd)i looked at peavey due to good tone and a reputation for solid amps if it were lost or stolen or just died i would get another one or at least another peavey probobly a 5150/6505 and i wish the distortions had seperate eq's but other than that i love it much clearer sounding with more gain than the other amps i have had i also have a crate Gx15